


Always Going Home

by Unoriginality



Series: Back To Where We Lasted [31]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, the midwest has weird food, they don't even have to want marriag for him to be accepted
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-11
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-25 22:18:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4978645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unoriginality/pseuds/Unoriginality
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A time to smile, a time to mourn. A trip to Des Moines gives Maria cause for both.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Always Going Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zanne Chaos (Kuchenhexe)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kuchenhexe/gifts).



_now the miles i put behind me_   
_ain't as hard as the miles that lay ahead_   
_and it's much too late to listen_   
_to the words of wisdom that my daddy said_   
_the straight and narrow path he showed me_   
_turned into a thousand winding roads_   
_my footsteps carry me away_   
_**but in my mind I'm always going home** _   
-Joe Diffie

Maria still would've preferred taking a plane to get to Des Moines; Ohio on into Iowa wasn't very exciting to look at, and a plane would've gone right over it. It would've been a lot faster, too. They only had a week off, and four of those days would be in travel time, entirely because they were taking a train.

Bucky had made an excellent point about the TSA and his arm, though.

Maria was trying to very pointedly ignore her surroundings, lost in a book, but Bucky's nervous habit of tapping his finger was getting annoying. He had his left side to the window, which meant that tapping was right on the window sill.

"Bucky?"

"Hm?"

"Stop that."

Bucky glanced at his hand, then dropped it into his lap. "Sorry. I'm just worried."

Maria sighed, marking her place in her book, and set it down on her lap. "Steve will be fine for a week without you. I promise. And if something happens, you know there's ways for the Avengers to come get us so he's not trying to clean up a mess without you."

Of course he wasn't even be nervous about meeting his girlfriend's father. No, he was too busy worrying about his brother. Although to be fair to Bucky, Steve sometimes did need a babysitter to stay out of trouble.

"I know," he said. "This is just the first time we've been apart this long since the war. I'm not used to it." Then he looked up at her. "Not that you aren't good company. I'm just the big brother, it's my job to fuss."

Maria reached out and put her hands over his. "Relax. If you have to be nervous, at least be nervous about meeting your girlfriend's father instead of whether your full grown adult partner can handle making his own meals for a week."

"I can't worry about both?"

"You can," Maria said. "But I'd rather you be worried about meeting my father, because that will take your mind off your separation anxiety."

"You make me sound like a lost puppy."

Maria had to cover her mouth to hide the smile that image invoked. "If it makes you feel better, Steve is probably just as lost without you."

"I thought you were trying to make me feel better," Bucky said, slouching in his seat. "But why do I have to be nervous about meeting your dad? Is he scary or something? Am I going to get threatened with a shotgun if I make you cry?"

Maria shook her head. "None of the above. He is probably going to be fighting you out of the kitchen, though. Guests don't cook in Hill household."

Bucky snorted. "I'll be making _something_ while I'm there. With your help. I want to show off that I broke you of canned soup."

Maria smiled. "That wasn't hard, you just gave me a couple lessons in cooking and I decided I liked it enough to put in effort. I wasn't fond of the soup, I'd just never learned how to cook before."

"Your parents never taught you?"

Maria shook her head. "We had set chores and we rarely deviated from that. Mom cooked, I cleaned the kitchen, Lizzy dusted the shelves and Mom's various musical water globes, and Genevieve vacuumed. Dad cleaned the bathrooms. Every day, like clockwork."

"That explains why you're so fast with dishes," Bucky said. "I can't even get half of them into the dishwasher before you've polished them to a shine."

Maria sat back, a smile on her face. "It's a skill I got good at. One of many, but cooking just wasn't one of them. I got lucky with you."

Bucky clearly couldn't help but look smug. "As far as the kitchen, yeah," he said. Then the smugness faded and he shrugged. "Dunno about the rest of me."

Oh here they went again. Humility wasn't Bucky's strong suit, he knew where his skills were and was very proud of them, but sometimes his past made a comment on his self-perception as a person and it became obvious in his words. They spoke about it somewhat regularly, though she suspected nowhere near as much as with Steve, but she accepted that. He and Steve were like binary stars, and she and Sharon and the other Avengers merely planets caught in their gravitational pull. It was where they belonged.

But sometimes, Bucky just let something slip around her that he probably didn't mean, or came from some other source of emotion and the words he said felt safer to him than whatever he wanted to actually say.

She leaned forward again and put her hands back on his. "I think I got lucky in all ways," she said. "I didn't get involved with you just because you could cook and dance. That's not enough to draw my attention. And I think you know that."

Bucky smiled ruefully. "Okay, so that was a bad thing to say. Guess I'm a bit more nervous about meeting your dad than I though."

That got a grin from her. "Good, because his shotgun is mean."

Bucky looked suddenly worried and betrayed. "You said he wouldn't do that!"

Maria sat back with a contented smile on her face. "Gotcha."

Bucky took in a deep breath, and she could practically see him counting to ten before he threatened to turn her over his knee. "You are a terrible woman and I think you've been hanging out with Sharon too much."

"Have I?"

There was a pause. "Okay, no, this is natural." His nose crinkled into an annoyed snit, as sometimes happened when she danced a circle around his words. She probably shouldn't, words weren't his strong point, so it wasn't a very fair competition, but he just made the cutest faces sometimes when she did.

He didn't seem as impressed. "Go back to your book."

With a triumphant smile, she lifted her book off her lap and went back to the world of Eve Dallas.

The nearest station to Des Moines was south of the city, in Osceola. Her father was meeting them there, and he warned her she wouldn't recognize his truck if she looked for him by it; it was new and big enough to fit their luggage and all three people, and the back had a cover on it to protect their bags from the rain.

That was good, as it was raining. Bucky was going to look like a drowning cat once he stepped outside. It was cute and she wished she could trick him out into the rain more often. As long as his arm was properly covered, of course. There were computers under that biomechtium. The metal was theoretically waterproof, but Bucky didn't like risking it too much, and Maria was in agreement with him.

He still looked like a drowned cat and it was adorable.

It was her father that found them before she could locate him; she figured he'd come inside because of the rain to wait. He'd changed since the last he saw her, facial hair shaven and visibly older. How many years had it been? Surely not that many. "Hey, baby girl. Looking for me?"

The differences didn't mean anything. That voice was the same, the way he called her a nickname she'd long outgrown, it was like coming in from the cold. She wrapped her arms around his neck when he hugged her, unable to do anything but smile, and hope the water prickling behind her eyes would go away. How she'd missed him. How she wished she'd stayed in better contact.

He let her go to study Bucky. Bucky was wearing a jacket, good for protecting his metal arm from the rain, but still too warm for a Midwestern late May. Her father looked him up and down. Bucky dwarfed him in sheer size, his broad shoulders and well built physique (something Maria enjoyed immensely, but her father didn't need to know that), and when he was hiding nerves, he came across as stoic, issuing silent challenges to everyone around him to cross his path.

Her father wasn't terribly intimidated. "You're bigger than in your pictures."

Bucky looked at Maria. "Is this how he's greeted all your boyfriends?"

That earned loud laughter from her father. "And here I thought you'd be too serious to be funny about that remark. It's nice to meet you, Bucky." He held out his hand. "My girl's told me you make her happy."

Bucky shook his hand. "I try."

"He taught me to dance, and to cook," Maria said.

Her father looked at her. "Didn't we teach you how to cook?"

Maria shook her head. "No. Bucky decided to change that when he noticed I was living on canned soups and microwave dinners. Told you that you'd have competition in the kitchen."

Her father snorted. "Did you warn him that guests don't cook in the Hill household?"

"I did, but I can't promise he won't bully his way into showing off one meal."

Her father studied Bucky like he was going to take on one of Bucky's silent challenges. "We'll see. After you try my wife's recipe for hotdish. If you like that, then I'll consider letting you into my kitchen."

"Good enough for me," Bucky said. "I'll trade you recipes if I like it."

Her father smiled. "Maria, you picked a winner."

Bucky looked at the rain outside the station. "That's not going to let up, is it?"

Her father looked outside. "Maybe, maybe not. It's the midwest, we can have rain and sun at the same time. But we shouldn't wait around for that, it's a good hour to home, and it's nearing dinner time. I want to be home before rush hour hits the city. We'll be at a crawl otherwise."

At Bucky's insistence, her father let him help put their bags in the back of the truck and cover it back up before they got up into the front. It had an extended cab, but the back seat area still looked a little small for someone Bucky's size. After arguing a bit in the rain, in which Bucky went from looking like a drowned kitten to an annoyed drowned kitten (also adorable), the two Hills agreed that Bucky got to sit up front and the smaller Maria would sit in the back. Bucky didn't like it, thought Maria should have that spot, but the size issue wasn't something he could deny.

He now looked like a petulant drowned cat.

Once on the road, Maria- still buckled, her father had a thing about that -leaned forward to try to be as much between the two men in her life as possible. "When'd you move from Chicago?"

"About three years ago," her father answered. "Chicago just stopped being home. All you girls were gone, and that house was way too big for just the two of us, so we moved." He looked at her through the review mirror. "Don't worry, I still have a couple guest rooms for when you girls visit. It's a rare occurrence, you all scattered across the country, but Lizzy and Laurence come by for Christmas with the grandkids. Genevieve moved to Oregon, she rarely gets down here. And you were hard to find. But the room's still there for the two of you. You won't be sleeping on couch beds."

"Oh good," Maria said. "I don't like couch beds. They're lumpy."

"Still nicer than some beds I've slept in," Bucky said. "The Army doesn't afford you nice beds in boot camp. Or in the field. I still can't believe Steve survived boot camp. I had trouble enough getting him to sleep in a bed that didn't kill his back before that, how he survived a cot is beyond me."

Oh good, Bucky was about to gear up with old stories from before Hydra. Dad was gonna start feeling young again.

"That's right, he had a lot of problems before he became Captain America, didn't he?"

"Yeah. Scoliosis. And asthma. And a heart murmur. Astigmatism. Migraines and ulcers. Color blind. Partly deaf in his right ear. And he wouldn't let me take care of him in any way unless I tricked him. He was too proud for his own good."

Her father seemed very interested in listening to Bucky's stories about Steve from before the war. "So how'd you trick him into a good bed?"

Bucky went silent, and Maria held her breath. She knew why, Steve and Bucky had explained before about how affectionate platonic male friends were allowed to be when she asked. (After catching Bucky using Steve's legs as a resting place for his own legs during a movie.) Bucky tricking Steve into sharing his bed for a night or two to rest his back wouldn't have caused anyone in their time to bat an eyelash.

Her father, however, wasn't born until the late fifties, when the right to that affection had been revoked by an increasingly homophobic society. He may not understand.

Finally, Bucky looked over at him. "Very carefully."

Maria could tell that the answer hadn't satisfied her father's curiosity, but he was letting the subject drop. "If he was that proud, that doesn't surprise me. So how did you and my girl meet?"

Bucky looked over his shoulder at Maria. "You want this one or do I take it?"

She fluttered her hand at him, passing the buck onto him. She wanted him and her father to bond a bit. Having her father like her current boyfriend would keep family peace and ensure more visits in the future.

Bucky shrugged. "It wasn't very romantic. Right after that mess when my identity slipped loose, Tony moved Steve and I to the Tower for safety. Maria was playing dutiful Stark Industries employee and representative of the Avengers and showed us to our new place in the Tower. We talked some after that, but we just didn't see each other a lot."

"Despite living just down the hall from each other," Maria added.

"Our paths didn't cross much." He grinned. "Then I saw you at that charity ball and decided you were the prettiest lady in the Avengers."

"And then it took you another two months before you approached me in a _grocery store_." She was teasing him, which was common between the two of them, although it wasn't as obvious around some of the others in the Tower. Maria was a private enough woman to keep her emotions to herself for the most part. Her father's presence, however, didn't register the same as being around employees or even fellow Avengers. She felt free.

Bucky gave her a sideways look. "You make yourself unapproachable sometimes," he said. "It took seeing you living on Amy's organics to try. If only so you weren't eating so poorly."

"There's nothing poor about organic foods."

"There's nothing wrong with cooking proper meals, either. You took to it like a fish to water."

She smiled. "I had a good teacher."

He half-turned in his seat, ready to say something, but her father interrupted with a stern "sit straight, boy. That's not safe."

Bucky turned back to sit in his seat slowly, staring at him, then glanced back at Maria, this time without turning more than his head. "Should we tell him that calling someone old enough to be his grandfather 'boy' is backwards to how it's supposed to be?"

"If you're not smart enough to stay still in your seat belt, you don't deserve to be treated by age," her father said sharply. "You're a boy, and a dumb one at that. Now sit still."

Maria held in a laugh that snorted out her nose despite her best efforts and the hand over her face. "Dad makes a point, Bucky. Old man or not, you do a lot of dumb things."

"Like what? What lies have Steve been telling you?"

"You busted a steering wheel because of road frustration."

"Once. My god it was _once_ , and I've driven since then just fine."

"That sounds like a dumb thing to me, boy," her father said, which earned him a sideways look that was given to Steve a lot and sometimes to Maria.

Bucky pointed back at Maria. "I see where you get it."

She gave him a placid smile, then sat back to watch the passing scenery and let her dad and Bucky talk. At first, it didn't sound like there'd be much to talk about; both were from different generations from her, but from each other, too. That ended up being the subject settled on, asking questions about each other's respective eras.

"Were you old enough at the time to enjoy the hippie culture?"

"No. I was a kid through most of the sixties. I was born in '56. I was old enough to be drafted, but the war ended just as my number was about to come up."

"Didn't want to enlist?"

Her dad shook his head. "Hell no. I saw the men come back from the war, I saw the injuries. I knew how many didn't even make it at all. I watched the news and saw the horrible things soldiers were sometimes forced to do. I wanted nothing to do with any of it."

"You're a thousand times smarter than Steve then," Bucky said, and Maria didn't have to lean forward or even pay more attention to their conversation than she already was to see that smile that accompanied his words.

"He actually wanted in?"

Bucky heaved a deep sigh. "Tried more than once to enlist and kept getting denied. He was so dead set on being out there."

Back to Steve again. Maria had heard all these stories, so she went back to tuning them out.

The house they pulled up to when they got to Des Moines was blue, stood out amongst the many white and cream and brick houses around it. She had a feeling her mother had made that choice.

Her father tried to take their luggage, but Bucky managed to bully him into just worrying about unlocking the door and let Bucky get the bags. Honestly, two grown men arguing over who carried two suitcases. She was tempted to grab them herself just to get them to shut up.

The inside of the house had her mother's touch all over it, her globes proudly displayed in her favorite old hutch that sat in the corner of the living room that the house opened up to. The pictures on the walls were organized, telling her family's life story from the time she met Maria's father. It stopped at a point, though there was still room on the wall there.

Maria took a second to close her eyes and force herself to just breathe a moment. There'd be plenty of time to talk about Mom later. Standing in by the door with two suitcases was not the time.

"I didn't ask over the phone," her father said once they were in, "but what sort of sleeping arrangements are appropriate? I made up the master bedroom and the guest room both, just in case you two needed separate beds."

"One's fine, Dad," Maria said. "Why the master bedroom though? Isn't that yours?"

He shook his head as he led them back to the hall. "Can't sleep in it. Too big and empty. He pointed down the hall to the room at the end. "That's the master bedroom. Comes with a bathroom. Just a shower stall, no bathtub."

Maria had to take another deep breath. She knew very well why her dad had declared the master bedroom 'too big and empty'. She looked at Bucky. "Go unpack for us?"

Bucky studied her a moment, and she was sure he'd figured out why he was sent off for this chore when she was normally fussy about where her things went, but shrugged and slipped past them. "Won't take me more than a minute," he said, turning down the hall.

Maria walked over to the empty spot on the wall where more pictures should be. The last one was of her, wearing a pink head scarf and a pink shirt that said 'Survivor' on it, flexing her arms like the strong woman Maria remembered her to be. "How long was she sick?"

She didn't turn around as her father joined her at her side. "I had a feeling you'd be asking where he couldn't hear. She wasn't sick long. She got diagnosed in an early stage about six months before SHIELD went down. We did everything, surgery, chemo, radiation. We thought she had it beat. She was a survivor, just like the others."

Maria looked up at him. "It came back."

He nodded. "It came back. We didn't think it could, but apparently, it's not abnormal for it to do that. She was Stage IV, it'd gotten into her bone marrow. She was a subtype that meant there was nothing to do but chemo until she couldn't stand it anymore and chose hospice. She was gone within two months of the diagnosis."

So abrupt. Her mom hadn't been that old, not in Maria's mind. The last picture of her, she was still beautiful, a smile on her face and strength in her eyes.

That empty space on the wall made her heart hurt until tears were already falling and she turned, grabbing hold of her father and burying her face against his neck. She hadn't even known. She'd never gotten to see her one last time. She hadn't even seen her for over a year before the diagnosis. How had she let herself become so distant from her family that she couldn't even be found to call to let her know?

Her father pet her hair, and his voice was full of tears he must never have stopped shedding, when he spoke. "Easy, baby girl. It's all right. We'll see her again someday." He held her a bit tighter. "You should know, when SHIELD went down and you and the other three were publicly indicted, she told me how proud of you she was."

That just made her cry more, hard sobs that left her coughing for need to breathe correctly. She wanted her mother there, to hear her say those words herself, but the chance for that was long gone.

She missed Bucky's foot steps as he approached them. "Here," he said, suddenly standing next to her and handing over some toilet paper. "I couldn't find any regular tissues."

She let go of her father enough to take the offered substitute kleenex and blew her nose. "Thank you," she said, her voice much smaller than usual.

Bucky looked at her father. "Sorry to get in the middle."

"It's fine," he said. "I didn't really think it'd take you all that long to unpack, and if you hadn't shown up to offer a shoulder, I would've been disappointed in you."

"I wasn't sure if it was appropriate, but I thought she might want a tissue, at least." He glanced back towards the hall. "Are there any tissues around? Like in a linen closet or something?" He looked at Maria, who was still hugging her father, her cheek pressed against his shoulder, and looking at Bucky. "You look like you could use them."

"Third door from the master bedroom is the linens closet. Bottom shelf has the kleenex boxes," her father said. As Bucky took off to find a fresh box for her, her father looked at her. "I'm gonna let you go, baby girl, put you on his shoulder. I gotta cook. Show the New Yorker what a hotdish is."

"Mom's recipe?" she asked, her expression already starting to crumple for another round of crying.

Her father rubbed her back. "Wouldn't use any other," he said. "Now, when Bucky comes back, I want you to sit down with him and let him cheer you up while I cook."

"We came to visit you," she said, sniffling a couple times and wondering where Bucky was with that tissue that she really desperately needed.

"Then come sit at the kitchen table," her father said. "We can find different things to talk about. Things that won't ruin our appetites."

Bucky returned with the tissues and Maria took a few seconds to blow her nose and dry up her face before she told him to go put the box in the bedroom.

Her father proved quite capable of keeping the conversation light, or at least away from a source of grief while he cooked. Mostly, he asked questions about Bucky, not really interrogating him, but wanting to know more about the man that had taken his baby girl's heart- really, Dad, that nickname has been outgrown. He was smart enough to avoid asking about anything related to Hydra, but everything else seemed fair game.

Bucky's assessment of the hotdish was positive, and her father practically glowed with pride. "Best hotdish in the Midwest. The recipe spans back to a generation older than you."

Bucky made a noise of approval, still chewing a bite. "Then I'll trade you recipes," he said once he'd swallowed. "My grandma and oldest aunt on my mother's side of the family moved to Ohio before I was born, so every Christmas, we got another Midwestern recipe. We never had hotdish, but I think that's because Mom put her foot down on it. It wasn't allowed in the house. I can only think that Grandma's hotdish was not that great."

"What recipe you thinking of sharing?" her dad asked. "Nothing too fancy, I only have to feed one person around here."

Bucky shook his head. "Chicken and dumplings. One of the few things Grandma brought with her that I actually liked. I improved her recipe when I moved out."

Maria's father frowned. "Chicken and dumplings is a Midwest staple. I got my own recipe for that."

Maria shook her head. "No, Dad. Oh no. Whatever spices Bucky adds to his, it makes the dumplings and the broth miles above anything I've seen out here. Not even Grandma Hill could make this."

Her father almost looked insulted, but then he stared a second at Bucky, watching him devour his food with growing nervousness. "All right then, trade. After the kitchen's clean, you and I, we'll write down our recipes."

"Deal," Bucky said, taking another bite with much more confidence than he had under her father's scrutinizing stare.

Maria actually was almost left out of the conversation that evening, after the kitchen was clean and they were comfortable in the living room. Her father and boyfriend talked food a lot, Bucky offering to get him some more recipes, scaled down to feed one person unless it was something that could freeze for her dad to eat again later.

At least Bucky wasn't talking her father's ear off about Steve. She understood why he was so anxious about being away from Steve this long, but she really was more interested in both of them talking with her father.

Although, did her father _really_ have to tell the childhood stories? At least hers weren't quite as embarrassing as some of the ones of her sisters. Her dad made sure to tell some of those, too. Maria recognized what he was doing; he'd done it with Lizzy and Genevieve's husbands even before they proposed, but after it was obvious it was a serious relationship. He was initiating Bucky into the family. He hadn't even asked about the state of their relationship except that they shared a bed and he was already deciding Bucky was family.

This was both good and bad. Potentially.

Her father excused himself for a minute to go smoke outside, with an offer for either of them to join him, if they were smokers. Bucky turned him down, saying that smoke irritated his eyes and sinuses, and Maria just flat out didn't smoke. She didn't have quite as bad of a reaction as Bucky just claimed to have, but second hand smoke wasn't a pleasant experience.

She eyeballed Bucky once her father had left. "I'm surprised smoke bothers you that much."

Bucky shrugged. "I've always been sensitive to it," he said. "I'd recover faster now than I did way back, but I never liked it. I avoided Rebecca when she started, told her flat out I wouldn't visit her place because it smelled like cigarette smoke." He sighed. "I am dead certain those damn cigarettes are at least partly to blame for her lung cancer. So no, not a fan of cigarettes."

Cancer.

Maria swallowed the word back- it was different, two different people, two different types of illness, the same fate regardless. "I wouldn't be surprised," she said. "There's a proven link between cigarettes and respiratory cancers and other conditions."

Bucky put his left arm around her- she'd sat next to him there, and one day she'd knock it into Bucky's head why she preferred the side that wasn't a good pillow to lean against. "Sorry. I wasn't thinking."

She shook her head. "It's okay. It was a fact about your sister that I hadn't known, and I like learning new things about you and your family. It's one of the parts of our relationship that I like the most. I know you don't talk about these things with people you don't care about deeply."

His grip on her shoulders tightened. "You need to return the favor, you know," he said. You can't tell me that nothing's happened in the last thirty-two years for you."

"No, I can't, not without lying," she admitted. "I just don't feel it's as interesting as your life. You lived through the Depression, you went to MIT. You fought in World War II. You were part of the greatest generation. And you're part of the Captain America legacy, that's a big thing. I told you, I went right into SHIELD after college, and you know some of things I did there. There wasn't much variation, even when I was going up the ranks."

"Bull," he said, pointing his flesh finger at her. "You're just used to thinking of everything as a secret. I demand equal time."

"Later," she said. "When we get home and we get back into our schedules. You can ask then. My father doesn't need to know these things."

"Your father is former CIA," Bucky sad. "I'm pretty sure he'd understand. He's proud of you for helping to destroy SHIELD, it can't be easy to disappoint him with your work."

She made a reluctant face, not really willing to concede that he was right. "Maybe some other time. I'm not ready for that yet."

Bucky kissed her temple. "Just remember, he's sixty now. There's not always going to be that 'some other time.' I don't want to see you go through with him what you're going through now with your mother."

She held her breath, torn between crying and smacking him for that, then released the breath and went limp against his arm. "I know," she said. He was right, and as tactful as possible about saying it. "We have a few days here yet."

"Good enough for now."

There wasn't much more conversation after her father returned; by that time, it was nearing ten, and travel had taken its toll on Maria and Bucky both. They bid her father goodnight before heading to bed.

Once dressed and both under the covers, Bucky grabbed his tablet. "Mind if I check my usual news pages?"

"And recipe pages, I'm sure," she said. "As long as you don't mind me reading. It's my bedtime routine except on my nights with you. And no, we are absolutely not doing anything else here, this is my parents' home and my parents' bed and that is slightly creepy."

"Truth and wisdom," Bucky said, propping himself back up against the headboard, fussing with his pillow until supported him. Maria mimicked him, also having to fight with the pillow- she missed her own pillows, they were fluffier.

Several minutes passed before Bucky's tablet started buzzing insistently. She raised an eyebrow in its direction. "Did you break it?"

"No," Bucky said. "Steve's trying to Skype me." He looked at her. "I'm not the only one with separation anxiety. At least he waited until bedtime."

Maria put her book down and leaned over Bucky's shoulder. "So answer already. You'll make him worry if you don't."

When Steve's face appeared on the screen, Maria could tell that he'd probably been chewing his nails the past few days and distracting himself however he could. She could hear video game music on in the background. "I didn't interrupt the visit, did I?" were the first words out of his mouth.

"No," Bucky said. "We were just reading before bed. Isn't it late for you over there?"

"Only eleven-thirty," Steve protested. "I didn't want to call too early over there, so I stayed up."

"Playing video games, it sounds like," Maria said, and Bucky tilted the screen of his tablet slightly for both of them to be in view.

"Oh, hi Maria," Steve said. He glanced off the side. "Yeah, I was falling asleep without something to concentrate on."

"Is that Wind Waker you're playing again?" Bucky said. "I thought you beat that game."

Maria glanced up at him. "One of the Zelda games?"

"Yeah," Bucky said. "Steve's on a mission with them."

"I am not," Steve said. "It just was an entertaining game. Plus there's some changes on the second round through. I figured I'd see what they are. So far, all I've seen is that Link stays in his pajamas the whole time instead of that green outfit."

"Adorable," Bucky said, rolling his eyes. "Save your game, turn it off, and go to bed."

"I will," Steve said, rubbing his hands over his face. "I was getting tired anyway. I just wanted to make sure you got there okay."

"We did, and don't worry, I can take care of him until we get home," Maria said. She was fond of Steve, considered him family, and just like Bucky, his odd habits could be adorable. She found a good pair of men to put in her life.

"All right," Steve said, rubbing the back of his neck with his eyes closed. "I just- okay, yeah, good night. Sleep well, you two."

"Good night, Steve," Bucky said, then disconnected the call. He set his tablet aside. "I think we should take our own suggestions," he said. "The world isn't blowing up without me so far, I think I can afford to ignore it a few more days."

She smiled, reached up and kissed him, lingering before pressing her face against his neck to leave a kiss, then one more on his metal shoulder. "Good night, Bucky." She settled down under the covers and turned out the light. In the dark, she heard him tell her good night. She cuddled up against his back and let herself fall asleep.


End file.
